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Looking for advice

Discussion in 'Gender Identity and Expression' started by pentacat, Jan 24, 2017.

  1. pentacat

    Regular Member

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    Before I start this, I want to preface by saying I apologize if I use any terms that aren't kind or appropriate.. I'm struggling to figure out how to express myself. Please do let me know if I need to correct my vocabulary.

    So, I'm 26 years old and I've played with my gender since I was a teenager. The past 7 years or so I've been increasingly more femme, so to speak, and I feel very comfortable with this. I'm kind of exaggerated in my femininity, and it's a fun and artistic way for me to express my self. I'm also autistic, and as odd as it may sound I do feel that there's a component of that tied to my relationship to my gender.
    However, I don't identify as a "woman", sometimes I refer to myself as one but it's not the most comfortable for me. I pass a cisgendered woman, and I know that there's privilege to how I move through the world. I thought maybe it was some sort of disillusionment with the word "woman", but the more feminist work and poetry I read I don't think that's the case.
    I feel like.. I'm AFAB, I'm okay with that. My anatomy doesn't bother me. But I feel so confused because every genderqueer/non conforming AFAB I see/meet is not femme. They're masculine in how the present, which is great but that's all I've seen. It's almost like there's this limitation on playing with gender, like "cross-dressing" is the only way to express being gender queer.
    I know this is all rambling, it's just been eating at me lately. Can you be a AFAB genderqueer femme? Is that a thing?

    tl,dr: I don't feel like a woman. But I'm comfortable being feminine. All the AFAB genderqueer people I've seen dress like "boys", and it puzzles me. Can we be genderqueer and still dress like a "girl"?

    Thanks everyone :slight_smile:
     
  2. Hats

    Regular Member

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    I don't see why not. After all, you don't have to be butch to be a lesbian.
     
  3. Irisviel

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    What exactly makes you not feel comfortable with being a woman, considering you act like one and are comfortable with being one physically, and you don't write about any problem with interacting with others as a woman?